I think I got this book from my brother. After rushing through it (I didn’t read every chapter), here is what I think.

Generally speaking, the book author had done quite a lot of research on many greatly successful people. So even though I have different take on each of those steps, I agree those steps have a lot of factual basis, and pretty much summarize the important traits that made those people successful. So this book can be used as a very good checklist of abilities you need develop if you want to have a successful life.

I first read the chapter 11, the Mystery of Sex Transmutation. I recognize the phenomena that the author is describing here, and agree with the author’s highest praise for people possessing this capability. From Buddhism’s perspective, the so called Sex Transmutation can be understood very clearly in a very deep level. Briefly, it is about Buddha nature and love. I appreciate very much some scientific basis that the author is trying to provide. For example, people possessing this capability has a brain that operate on a highvibration of waves. I remember when I was in my last year of my undergraduate right before I came to the states, I arranged my weekly schedule like this: during the weekdays I was very much focused on my engineering project and study. I wasexercising my brain just like exercising my body with those math and engineering thinking methods. And I did it very focused and intensively. On the weekend, I will spend half a day browsing through all kinds of books in the bookstore, probably focusing on some subjects that I was focusing on in those weeks. Then I would spend half a day on Sunday in a beautifulscenery doing some free thinking. It worked marvelously well for me.

About the chapter Desire, I am not satisfied with the unrational explanation the author offered for the function of desire. Personally I would like a more rational explanation: the facts that so many great people achieve success with strong desires just show us the great potential of human being and how many opportunities you can pick up for your goal if you really focus on it, and because of that great potential if we focus on something in a certain period of time we are able to achieve great results that we probably dare not imagine conventionally. (This definitely applies to learning process as well). The evidences the author offered in the book just showed us how great that potential can be, which most people are not aware of. Another thing that I want to point out is that if you want to focus intensive on some goals over a long period of time, it is better to focus on some deeper goals instead superficial ones. I think in the process of pursuing your desire, people need to learn to discover more and more essential things, and have them as the desire in the process.

Yes, this is a book about thinking. For many people who think ALL THE TIME and unable to stop thinking and for people who passively talk about no thinking, this book is highly recommended. This book will teach you a lot about how to think better. A lot of people who talk about no thinking just don’t know how to think. A lot of people who think all the time and acknowledge thinking unconditionally don’t know how to think.